Iona lunged for the last seat at the table.

The detective approaching it from the other side gave an outraged gasp. 'Look at bloody that! The Baby-Faced Assassin strikes again.'

'Hey, mate,' Iona grinned up at him, now shuffling the chair forward and placing her pen and pad on the table. 'It's dog-eat-dog in this world.'

'Wouldn't have liked to have played musical chairs at one of your birthday parties,' he retorted.

'Who said you'd have been invited?' she shot back.

A ripple of laughter passed through the people sitting closest. The officer retreated towards the chairs lining the back wall, speeding up before all of those were taken, too.

Iona glanced left and right. They were in the main briefing room of the Counter Terrorism Unit's operations floor in Orion House, just off the M60 on the outskirts of Manchester. The oval table sat fifteen officers, sixteen if you included the superintendent who they were now all waiting for. Several of her colleagues had mugs of coffee or tea in front of them. Low conversations rolled around. The usual stuff, last night's telly, football, acceleration speed of the unmarked Subaru just added to the motor pool. Iona screened most of it out, ears homing in on a murmured conversation taking place at about three o'clock.

Most men, she suspected, had no idea that most women possessed this ability. That and superior peripheral vision. If the guy two places to her left knew about the vision, he wouldn't be glancing quite so obviously at her chest. The conversation between the two middle-aged officers at three o'clock carried on.

'Worrying thing is, I bought my daughter a similar thing.'

'A refurb?'

'Yeah – off the internet. Ebay.'

'Piss cheap?'

'Absolutely. Don't get me wrong, it's quality; she does all her coursework on it. Skypes the wife using its built-in webcam most evenings.'

'Where's she studying?'

'Down in Bristol. Medicine.'

'And you've no idea where it came from originally?'

'Nope. Some big corporation, I'd assumed.'

'You assumed. Did you check the hard drive?'

'Wouldn't know how to. The place selling it said the memory of every computer is wiped clean, checked for viruses and all that —'

The doors opened and Superintendent Graham O'Dowd made straight for the empty seat at the table's mid-point. Conversations began to rapidly die.

'I paid an extra twenty-five quid for a year's warranty,' the officer hurriedly whispered. 'That was it, job done.' He sat back and crossed his arms. Like every other person in the room, his attention was now on O'Dowd.

The superintendent placed a laptop on the table and switched it on. A moment later, the wall-mounted screen behind him came to life. A cursor started moving about, files opened, slides flashed up and were quickly minimised. The room watched in silence, collectively trying to sneak a preview.

O'Dowd finally looked up. 'OK, gents – and ladies.' His flinty eyes settled on Iona for an instant. 'Apologies to be dragging you in at six in the afternoon.'

Iona glanced at the row of windows: black. How she disliked mid-winter. Dark when you got up, dark when you went home. Only the promise of Christmas four weeks away lifted the gloom.

'The reason is that things have started to move very fast on this. I'll start at the beginning; apologies to those of you already up to speed. Three days ago, a final year student at the University of Manchester purchased a refurbished laptop from a seller of such things hawking his wa